How Family Finances Predict Teen’s Generosity?

 

Written by: Kasandra Bermúdez, Sonya Xinyue Xiao, Jacob P. Hoffman, Hunter R. Herrington, Isaac Dempsey

 

All correspondence concerning this manuscript should be addressed to Sonya Xinyue Xiao at

xx57@nau.edu, Department of Psychological Sciences, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff,

AZ, USA.

     

     When thinking about the complexities of economic pressures and financial struggles, our

minds tend to wander toward the predicaments of grown adults. We think about their coping

mechanisms, their financial moves, and the solutions they seek to stray out of the maze they have

found themselves in. Undeniably, these concerns hold immense significance, but there exists an

untold narrative that remains overlooked, the profound impact of economic pressure on our

young generation: adolescents.

     Parents, have you ever wondered how financial hardships could be linked to your child?

You have most likely ensured that their physical necessities are met, but have you considered

how economic pressure could be impacting their social-emotional well-being such as how they

interact and treat others? Researchers label behaviors that are intended to help one another as

prosocial behavior. According to prior findings such as the Family Stress Model, youth’s

adjustment can be influenced by socioeconomic status through the mechanism of family

economic pressure. In our study, we aimed to explore the relationship between economic

pressure and the prosocial behavior of adolescents, varying based on the specific type of

behavior.

Kindness Matters: Types of Prosocial Behaviors:

     In project PBinJ, we focused on six types of prosocial behaviors generally observed in

adolescents (see Carlo et al., 2003; Xiao et al., 2019 to learn more about these behaviors):

altruistic, public, compliant, anonymous, dire, and emotional. Each of these behaviors is

motivated by different concerns and enacted under specific circumstances. For example, an

emergency might evoke a teen to take part in dire prosocial behavior. This is because dire

prosocial behavior is a type of helping behavior that occurs when there is a state of emergency or

crisis. Similarly, all helping behaviors require different circumstances and motivations. Public

behavior requires an audience and recognition whereas anonymous behaviors require the exact

opposite. Altruistic behaviors require selflessness, compliant behaviors require obligation, and

emotional prosocial behaviors are motivated by someone's emotions, taking said emotions into

consideration for their actions. To date, there is little research focusing on how these types of

prosocial behaviors are related to the perceived economic pressure a family is experiencing. On

the one hand, perhaps greater economic pressure experienced by families would cause stress in

adolescents and which could deplete adolescents’ psychological resources to engage in helping

behaviors toward others. On the other hand, people with more financial resources might not

engage in more prosocial behaviors due to generally being more self-oriented. Here, we

predicted that with more economic pressure, children would show more altruistic and

anonymous prosocial behavior and less public prosocial behavior based on prior research.

How Does Family Economic Pressure Relate to Prosocial Behavior?

     We addressed the question of “How does family economic pressure relate to prosocial

behavior?” in Project Prosocial Behavior in Juveniles (PBinJ). During 2021-2022, we surveyed

143 adolescents (ages 11-14) and their parents. Among the children, 54.6% were White, 23.8%

were Black, 11.2% were Asian, 2.1% were Multiracial, and 8.4% were Hispanic. Parents

reported their perceived family economic pressure and the prosocial behavior of the children. For

economic pressure, we asked about how often the family could make ends meet and how much

money (if any) they had left over at the end of the month, typically. For prosocial behavior, we

asked questions related to the six types of prosocial behavior the parent observed in their child.

     We found that adolescents in families with greater economic pressure were less likely to

engage in emotional and dire prosocial behaviors toward others. This effect was seen even after

considering other factors such as age, gender, and race/ethnicity. That is to say, adolescents of

different ages, genders, and races all demonstrated that the greater the economic pressure, the

less likely the engagement of helpful behaviors motivated by emergency situations and behaviors

mediated by emotions. However, we didn't find any connection between economic pressure and

other types of prosocial behaviors like public, anonymous, compliant, and altruistic. This finding

is also important because this means that the level of economic pressure a family experienced

was not really related to a teens tendency to engage in public, anonymous, obliging, and selfless

behaviors.

What can we conclude from this information?

     Most importantly, we can stop being so hard on adolescents. As a society, we put blame

on our teenagers for their rebellious attitudes, but this research indicates that there is more than

meets the eye. We found that when families face financial difficulties, it can affect teenagers'

helping behavior, especially those motivated by emotions, suggesting that during early

adolescence these types of behaviors may be influenced by the family's financial situation. We

found that when an adolescent’s family is experiencing greater economic stress they are less

likely to engage in emotional and dire prosocial development. This might be due to the emotional

distress and discomfort that economic pressure can place on the parental figures, which in turn

impacts the youth’s emotion-related adjustment. This research can be beneficial in helping

parents understand the wider impact that their financial situation might have on the certain types

of prosocial behavior their children engage in. To specify, we found that negative parenting is

related to lower levels of emotional prosocial behaviors and high family economic pressure.

Future researchers might also benefit from this study to devise their own research questions

about how other types of prosocial behaviors apart from emotional and dire behaviors are related

to economic pressure and how other types of behaviors are influenced by factors in the Family

Stress Model.